Connecting TaxCloud to WooCommerce

The TaxCloud integration for WooCommerce provides a comprehensive sales tax management solution for your store, automating sales tax calculation, collection, and remittance across all U.S. jurisdictions.

How the integration works

TaxCloud connects to your WooCommerce site using a WordPress plugin. When that plugin is installed and configured, TaxCloud provides:

1. Realtime sales tax rates for orders
2. Order capture for reporting and tax filing
3. Exempt customer support

Realtime tax rates

The integration calculates sales tax in real time for every state, county, city, and special jurisdiction in the US. Rates are updated automatically so you never have to worry.

Taxability information codes (TICs) help determine whether sales tax applies. Assigning the correct TICs to the goods and services that you sell allows TaxCloud to apply accurate:

• Sales and use tax rates
• Product and service exemptions
• Sales tax holidays

Order capture

By default, WooCommerce orders are captured in TaxCloud when they are set to Completed status. If needed, you can configure the integration to capture orders when they are paid.

Customer exemptions

The integration supports three different modes for exempt customers:

1. No exemptions enabled: If your store does not have tax-exempt customers, you can disable exemptions entirely to simplify tax compliance.
2. Exemptions enabled for specific customers: If you sell to a specific list of tax-exempt customers, exemptions can be applied based on user roles. Note that this requires the customer to create an account and log in while shopping.
3. Exemptions enabled for all customers: Customers who are not pre-approved for exemptions can submit an exemption certificate at checkout. During checkout, the customer must be logged in, select the option to add an exemption certificate, and provide their exemption information.

For detailed instructions, see our dedicated article on configuring WooCommerce exemptions.

Before you begin

Complete the following steps before you set up the integration to ensure that it works as intended.

Complete TaxCloud setup

Your TaxCloud account must be set up so that the integration works correctly.

1. Create a TaxCloud account if you don't already have one. You must be on the TaxCloud Premium plan or a free trial to use the WooCommerce integration.
2. Sign into TaxCloud.
3. Complete your TaxCloud Business Profile.
4. Set up your locations and states.

Look up Taxability Information Codes

Use our Taxability Information Codes page to look up your goods/services.

• If there is one TIC that matches all the products that you sell, you can use that code as the default for the integration.
• If your goods and services don’t match one TIC, assign a specific TIC to each product in your Adobe Commerce store. In this scenario, the default TIC can be 0 (taxed) or a specific TIC.

Make sure WooCommerce is set up

WooCommerce must be installed and configured on your WordPress site before you set up the TaxCloud for WooCommerce integration.

Step 1: Add WooCommerce to your TaxCloud account

In TaxCloud, set up the connection to WooCommerce.

1. Go to the Integrations page.
2. Click Add Connection, then click WooCommerce.

3. In the top-right corner, click Add.

   

   Enter the integration details.

   

   1. Enter a Name for the integration.

      This name is used for identification purposes in TaxCloud. For example, if you have multiple integrations connected the name helps you differentiate them.

   2. Enter the URL of your store.
   3. Enter the Taxability Information Code (TIC) that best fits the goods or services that you sell so that TaxCloud can identify and properly tax items. You should have already researched TICs in Before you begin.
      • To search for TICs, expand Need Help Finding your Taxability Information Code (TIC)?
      • If there is no match, enter 0. This will set items to taxable.
4. Click Finish Setup.

5. At the bottom of the page under V1 API Key, note the Login ID and API Key. You'll use this information later to authenticate with WooCommerce.

   

Step 2: Install TaxCloud for WooCommerce on your WordPress site

1. Sign into your WordPress site.
2. Navigate to the plugins page.
3. Click Add Plugin.

4. Search for TaxCloud for WooCommerce.

   

5. Install the plugin.
6. After installation finishes, click Activate Plugin.

Step 3: Remove existing WooCommerce tax rates

If there are one or more rates in your WooCommerce tax rate tables, you will be presented with a notice like this when you log in to WordPress.

In most situations you should delete all existing tax rates to avoid double charging your customers. Only keep your existing WooCommerce tax rates is if they are for tax types that are not handled by TaxCloud.

Step 4: Configure TaxCloud for WooCommerce settings

Complete the following steps to set up TaxCloud for WooCommerce on your WordPress site.

4a: Enter your TaxCloud API credentials

Adding your API credentials allows the plugin to communicate with your TaxCloud account.

1. From your WordPress admin portal, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Integrations > TaxCloud for WooCommerce.

   

2. Enter your TaxCloud API credentials in TaxCloud API ID and TaxCloud API Key. You recorded these in Step 1, and you can find them again on the Integrations page.
3. Click Verify Settings.
4. If you see a success message, click Save changes at the bottom of the page. If you see a failure message, confirm that you have entered the credentials correctly and try again.

4b: Set your shipping origin addresses

On the same page under Address Settings, you should now see a list of your TaxCloud locations in the Shipping Origin Addresses field.

1. Select all of the addresses you ship your products from.
2. Click Save changes at the bottom of the page.

4c: Set the TIC for shipping

On the same page under Advanced Settings, set the Shipping TIC that best fits your shipping method. This controls how taxes are calculated for shipping.

4d: Set up customer exemptions

On the same page under Exemption Settings, configure how you want to handle exempt customers. For detailed instructions, see our dedicated article on configuring WooCommerce exemptions.

Step 5: Configure your product catalog

Set Taxability Information Codes (TICs) and and shipping origin addresses for your products.

5a: Set TICs for your products

If you sell products that do not fall into the category indicated by the default TIC you set for the integration, you will need to assign appropriate TICs to these products. For your convenience, there are three ways you can assign TICs.

Option 1: Category-level TIC assignment

To assign a TIC to all products in a category:

1. Navigate to Products > Categories
2. Select the category.

3. Next to Taxability Information Code, click Select and then choose a TIC.

   

4. Click Save Changes.

Option 2: Bulk TIC assignment

To assign a TIC to a group of products:

1. Navigate to the Products page.

2. Check the box next to the products that you'd like to assign the same TIC to.

   

3. From the Bulk Actions menu, select Edit, then click Apply.

4. Under Product data, select a new TIC.

   

5. Click Update.

Option 3: Product-level TIC assignment

To assign a TIC to a single product:

1. Navigate to the Products page.
2. Edit the product.

3. Scroll to the Product data box.

   

4. On the General tab, select a new TIC.
5. Click Update in the Publish box.

5b: (Multi-state businesses only) Select shipping origin addresses

If you ship items from more than one business location, you also need to indicate the shipping origin addresses for each of your items. This is important because a handful of states use the origin address to determine the sales tax rate to apply.

By default, all products in your store are configured to ship from the Shipping Origin Addresses you previously configured in Step 4b.

If you need to change the default origin addresses for a product:

1. Navigate to the Products page.
2. Edit the product.
3. Scroll to the Product data box.
4. Go to the Shipping tab.
5. Add or remove Origin addresses.

Step 6: Test the integration

You should perform several test transactions to ensure that everything is working properly.

1. Add some items to your cart and go through the checkout process to make sure sales tax is calculated and applied.
2. After checking out, go to the WooCommerce > Orders page to mark your test order as “completed.”
3. Review your transactions by logging in to TaxCloud and navigating to the Transactions page.

Step 7: Set the integration live

After you’re done testing, you can set the connection live in TaxCloud. After this point, all captured transactions are included in reporting and tax remittance. 

1. In TaxCloud, go to the Integrations page.
2. Click the WooCommerce connection.

3. In the top-right corner of the page, click Go Live.

   

4. Confirm that you want to go live.

That’s it – TaxCloud is set up to handle your tax calculations for your WooCommerce store.